


Compliance

by always_a_queen



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2835893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_a_queen/pseuds/always_a_queen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't worry, Doctor Simmons. I know how to make you comply," Doctor Whitehall says, and Jemma feels a prickle of panic run down her spine. They know she's loyal to SHIELD. They know she's betrayed HYDRA. They know.<br/>And now she's going to pay the price for it.</p><p>Written for the AOS Exchange on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compliance

**Author's Note:**

> This pretty much goes AU sometime before 2x05. That's really all you need to know.
> 
> It's also a oneshot that I'm very interested in continuing one day.

"Don't worry, Doctor Simmons. I know how to make you comply," Doctor Whitehall says, and Jemma feels a prickle of panic run down her spine. They know she's loyal to SHIELD. They know she's betrayed HYDRA. They know.

And now she's going to pay the price for it.

The guards behind her move closer. Each of them grabs one of her arms, and even though she struggles and yells, she knows her resistance is futile.

They drag her backwards and into another room. She's locked into a metal contraption for who knows how long. She screams until her throat is hoarse and cries until her tears run out.

In the end, it doesn't matter. She doesn't know how long she stays in that room, but she does know that when she leaves it again, the world has fallen into a soundless, motionless blur.

* * *

 

The fog doesn't begin to lift for a long time, and when it does, Simmons finds herself in a SHIELD Quinjet. The world is loud. And bright. And busy. Her brain feels too full of sensation. It's so overpowering that it _hurts_.

And Simmons thinks she must be screaming and screaming but she can't hear the _sound_ of it, so maybe it's her soul crying out and not her mouth.

"Hey..."

That word pierces through the veil over her consciousness and the world narrows to that one point of focus: a set of soft brown eyes full of concern, staring right into hers.

"Hey."

Dimly, Simmons registers several things. She's sitting at a table, staring at nothing, completely unmoving. She's not sure how long she's been sitting, how long she's been waiting. Since the fog settled around her, time has become an intangible, inconsequential thing. It does not matter. Goals matter. Complying with Whitehall's instructions matter.

Whitehall's not here.

"You alright, pretty girl?"

"Trip," she whispers, finally, because she _knows this_. She _knows_ Trip. She _trusts_ Trip.

At least...she thinks she does.

"Yeah, I'm right here. You're safe now."

Simmons feels a strange peace settle over her. If Trip says she's safe, then she's safe.

But she feels untethered. Adrift. She's become used to obeying rules and following orders and doing what needs to be done. She's become used to compliance.

Now that is gone.

And it feels so very _wrong_.

"Jemma," Trip is saying, and even that name— _her_ name— _sounds_ wrong. "Can you tell me what happened to you?"

She stares at him, trying to comprehend the question. What happened? The answer is too long and too complicated for her to even know where to begin.

Trip reaches for her hand. His touch feels like a lifeline.

"You're gonna be okay, Jemma. Let me help you."

And that sounds just enough like an order that Simmons does.

* * *

 

A month goes by, and Simmons quickly finds out that she doesn't fit in her life anymore.

She spends two weeks on leave, board out of her skull, trying to figure out how to live life again without constantly needing instructions with which she can happily comply.

When she finally gets back to work, the fact that science is still there and it's still the same is comforting.

Perhaps the strangest thing about her situation is the fact that Simmons' rational mind understands exactly what they did to her. She's analyzed the drugs they pumped through her veins. She's completely capable of comprehending how they tore into her brain, loosened her mind, lowered her inhibitions, and stripped her of free thought. She knows how they taught her to comply, how they trained her to _rely_ on orders and instructions.

She _understands_ her own brainwashing on a complex level, but she can't force herself to work around it. It's infuriating, the way she _knows_ exactly what she's doing and why she's doing it. At the same time she can't seem to stop herself.

It manifests in different ways. Sometimes she finds herself stopping in between activities for no reason other than no one has _told_ her to do what she needs to do next. Sometimes she wakes up in the morning and has to register that she should eat breakfast and brush her teeth.

Having someone tell her what to do feels normal and safe, but the person instructing her is never _Whitehall_ , so it also always feels wrong. Her team is careful about direct orders now. They watch how they phrase things because they want to make sure she's doing things by her own choice.

And that's a good thing. Simmons recognizes that it's a good thing. She just also sometimes _craves_ the mind-numbing bliss of just being a good soldier.

She thinks now that she understands Ward a little better. True, he was never actually brainwashed in _quite_ the same way, but a lot of his loyalty towards Garrett was conditioned. She wonders once, now that Garrett is gone, if he feels the same way she does. A puppet with no master tangled up in their own strings. After that thought strikes her, she tries to push all thoughts of Ward from her mind. She doesn't _want_ to understand him or his choices better. He made terrible choices. Contemplating the fact that she could very well be headed down a path to do the same scares the hell out of Simmons.

She confesses this to Trip once. She tells Trip a lot of things she doesn't want to tell Skye or May or Coulson or Fitz. It's not because she thinks they can't handle hearing it, but because _she_ can't handle telling _them_. Trip's not like that though. Trip still teases her and talks to her like she's just the same. He still flashes those mega-watt smiles at her and flirts shamelessly. Sometimes when he passes her in the hallway he puts his hands on her shoulders or on her waist.

That normalcy is such a relief. Despite the dizziness that fills her brain, Trip helps her keep her balance. He makes her laugh, and her laughter makes her feel like the Simmons-that-once-was again.

Eventually she realizes that her entire thought process is different. The way ideas spin through her mind has altered; the way she comprehends and processes information has changed. HYDRA didn't just turn off her decision making ability or remove her inhibitions or make her suggestible; they rewired her entire brain.

In a way, she understands Fitz much better now. She understands how he's trying to re-learn the entire world around him because that's exactly what she's doing. Their brains have both been rewired. It doesn't heal their relationship completely, but it does smooth over a few of the bumpy places.

He's not the same and neither is she. Their new selves are learning how to be friends again. Occasionally it's difficult and complicated, and it's definitely slow-going, but Simmons is finding out that it's worth it.

Trip, though...Trip is _uncomplicated_ in the best way. True to his word, he helps her. He doesn't understand—and to be honest, he doesn't even really try to—but he helps. It's like he knows that he won't completely understand what she went through, but the fact that he can't or won't understand doesn't _matter_. When she starts to explain how she feels, he _listens_. That's the most important thing.

* * *

 

Four months go by before migraines aren't an almost daily occurrence. It's like her brain knows that something is wrong with it and protests that wrongness at ever possible opportunity.

On one of her first few headache-free days, Trip swings by her lab. She mostly works by herself now. She and Fitz are unable to seamlessly occupy the same space now, and while neither of them really _like_ being apart, they both _need_ space between them.

Trip stopping by isn't all that unusual. He's a pretty regular visitor. It used to be that he'd check up on her every few hours, just to make sure she was still moving and still processing the world. She needed the occasional helpful nudge, especially at the beginning, when making decisions was even harder.

She can order food at restaurants now. She can decide when to brush her teeth and how she wants to get at solving a particular problem. She can _feel_ her brain slowly rewiring itself, and as it does, her head hurts less and less and the world gets clearer and clearer.

Trip's always been a focal point, a lighthouse that was never obscured by waves or rain or the black of night.

He grabs a stool and takes a seat beside her, and she starts telling him what she's working on. He doesn't ask anymore, although at one point he used to need to in order for her to talk with him, because part of the programming involved assets being seen but not heard. Even now it's occasionally difficult for Simmons to talk about more than just the bare facts of her work. It's hard to bring up what fascinates her or engages her mind, because she's so used to filtering it out in order to tell Whitehall only what he absolutely needed to know.

"Anyway," she says after wrapping up a long tangent about the benefits of her current project. "What brings you down here?"

With a heart-melting smile, Trip sets a little wrapped box with a bow on the table in front of her.

"What's the occasion?" she asks, only hesitating for a second before taking the initiative and picking it up. She doesn't open it.

"It's your birthday," he says, a little sadly.

He may as well have punched her in the gut. Her memory for dates is gone. She's lucky if she has the right day of the week, much less month. Attributing significance to those numbers and names is even more difficult.

But Trip remembered. And he bought her a gift.

And suddenly Simmons is crying.

"Aw, man," Trip says. "I didn't mean to make you sad."

She notices that he doesn't say _don't cry_. He did that once, and she immediately obeyed the instruction and stopped crying. He hasn't ever done that since. He actually is very careful not to accidently order her to do things.

"I'm not..." She pulls off her safety glasses as he hands her a tissue and then wipes at her eyes. "I don't think these are sad tears."

Trip cups her shoulders with his hands. "Well, that's a relief."

Simmons bites her lower lip to hold back a smile even as she keeps right on shedding tears.

"Do you want to open it?"

 _Can I?_ She almost asks, but she bites her tongue and pulls the bow off of the box. For a second she contemplates what to do with it, but Trip grabs it from her and sticks it to her forehead.

The earrings are very pretty. They're gold and swirly and intricate, but not too large or too dangly so she can wear them in the lab. They're very cute and feminine and obviously very well made.

"Thank you," she tells him, touching one piece and then the other. "They're beautiful."

"You're welcome," he says. "I thought you deserved something special. Like you."

Simmons has to wipe away more tears at those words. She's found that it's still a habit to bottle up her own emotions deep inside, because her feelings don't matter in the face or accomplishing the next objective, but whenever she's around Trip, her feelings matter. Her feelings are important.

And to her, that makes Trip and his friendship and his presence in her life even more valuable.

"Permission to hug?" Trip asks. The significance of her giving _him_ permission sticks in her brain even as she nods and lets him wrap his arms around her.

She's getting better at not needing that constant instruction, but the idea of being able to be the one able to grant permission to _Trip_ fixes another thing inside her she didn't quite realize was broken. It's a better birthday present than the necklace, that's for sure.

And if Trip notices the fact that she's now getting tears all over his very nice jacket, he doesn't comment on it.

What he does say, is: "Happy Birthday, Jemma." And a second miraculous thing happens.

Her name finally feels like it's _hers_ again.

* * *

_end._

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt for this involved Jemma dealing with Hydra's brainwashing. I realized later that this is sort of more Jemma-dealing-with-the-aftermath of Hydra's brainwashing. Hopefully that's okay. It also ended up as more of a character study than a piece with an actual plot. Hopefully that's alright too.


End file.
